public:dojo:wiki:disposable-vexor-ratting

The disposable nature of this Vexor makes it an excellent choice for AFK ratting in dangerous or heavily camped space.

The Vexor can make 5-7 million ISK/tick as an Alpha and 8-10 million ISK/tick as a max-skill Omega at 100% BRM while costing 20-25 million ISK.

Despite their cost, Faction drones are an excellent investment for the 20% DPS boost over T1 drones. Your profit will be severely reduced with T1 drones.

Both fits cost 20-25 million ISK, including drones, however, platinum insurance will reduce the net loss to 14-19 million ISK. At 100% BRM it will take 40-80 minutes of ratting to pay for the Vexor; at 200% BRM it takes a bare 20-40 minutes.

You must be cap-stable to rat in either of these fits. If you are Omega and you are not stable in the Omega fit, try the Alpha fit. If you keep getting cap alarms despite being cap-stable reduce the cap alarm threshold to 20-25% as cap recharge peaks at 25%. Note that if you are on the edge of stability you may dip below 25% capacitor when your shield booster cycles despite being cap stable.

Disposable Ratting Vexor - Guristas - Omega Clone

This Fit Requires Capacitor Stability!

[Vexor, Disposable Ratting Vexor - Guristas - Omega Clone]

Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Mark I Compact Capacitor Flux Coil
Mark I Compact Capacitor Flux Coil

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Large Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery
Large Clarity Ward Enduring Shield Booster
Enduring Kinetic Shield Hardener

Drone Link Augmentor I
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Medium Kinetic Shield Reinforcer I
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer I
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer I


Hornet II x1
Vespa II x2
Wasp II x2

Disposable Ratting Vexor - Guristas - Alpha Clone

This Fit Requires Capacitor Stability!

[Vexor, Disposable Ratting Vexor - Guristas - Alpha Clone]

Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Mark I Compact Capacitor Flux Coil
Mark I Compact Capacitor Flux Coil

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Large Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery
Large Clarity Ward Enduring Shield Booster
Enduring Thermal Shield Hardener

Drone Link Augmentor I
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Medium Kinetic Shield Reinforcer I
Medium Kinetic Shield Reinforcer I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I


Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Wasp x2
Hornet II x1

Skills needed

In addition to the skills required to sit in the ship, you should have:

  • Gallente Cruiser IV
  • Drone Interfacing III
  • Light, Medium, and Heavy Drone Operation III
  • Capacitor Management, Capacitor Systems Operation and other capacitor skills high enough to be cap stable
    • If you are Omega and are not cap stable in the Omega clone fit try the Alpha fit.

After the required skills, consider training:

  • Drone Interfacing and Drone Operation skills to improve your DPS and unlock T2 drones.
  • Gallente Cruiser V to improve your DPS.
  • Navigation skills to improve your speed which helps your tank.
  • Shield Rigging to reduce your signature radius which helps your tank.

Make sure you switch to a clean pod before undocking. Your Shield Hardener, Shield Booster, and Afterburner should always be active while you are running a site.

  1. Warp to the site at 30 to 50 km.
  2. Find an object around the center of where the rats are spawning, and orbit it at 35 km.
  3. Drop your drones.
  4. Bookmark the site.
  5. Spend a minute watching. Verify your modules are on, your tank is holding, your drones are shooting a rat, and the rats have not aggressed your drones.
  6. Go AFK. Set a timer to come back and move to a new site in about an hour.
    • Alternatively, minimize EVE while keeping alarm sounds on and only pay attention if you hear the shield alarm.
    • Leaving your Vexor in space after the site is completed does not add much risk as the site despawns and it requires combat probes to find your Vexor.

It is extremely rare for the rats to shoot Vexor drones. If this happens, recall your drones, warp to a safe, eject from your ship, and re-board your ship. This seems to reset the rat aggro.

If the Vexor's tank isn't holding

This rarely happens. See site list below for known occasions.

  1. Overheat your shield booster. The shield booster can overheat for a long time before it burns out.
  2. Assign your drones to the most dangerous rat. In order of priority these are:
    1. Frigates that are currently webbing you.
    2. Dire Pithum Mortifiers. These shoot Inferno Light Missiles that apply perfectly.
    3. A random elite cruiser (Dire prefix).
    4. A random battlecruiser.
  3. If overheating your shield booster isn't enough, overheat your afterburner too. Be careful not to burn it out.

Runnable sites in order of profitability

The sites in this list have been tested and determined to be runnable using the above fit. The list is not necessarily comprehensive. In order of profitability:

  1. Guristas Havens.
    • Both fits can do Stargate Havens (the ones with the warp-in popup).
    • The Omega fit can do Gas Havens with a little heat on the initial wave; the Alpha fit can do Gas Havens with a good bit of heat, including heating in some of the middle waves. Focus Dire Pithum Mortifiers on the first wave of Gas Havens.
      • Do not orbit the Chemical Factory. Orbit a rock near the midpoint of the large formation. If you orbit the Chemical Factory there is a small chance your Vexor will bump into a rock on the opposite side of the formation. This reduces your speed to 0 and you will die very quickly.
      • Very rarely webbing frigates can cause your tank to break in Gas Havens. In practice this risk seems to be negligible.
    • Havens have a very small chance of spawning a NPC dreadnought that will kill your Vexor in the final wave. This risk is negligible compared to the general risks of semi or fully AFK ratting.
  2. Guristas Forsaken Hubs. It is unlikely, but your tank may break on spawns with 4 elite cruisers, especially if the wave contains multiple Dire Pithum Mortifiers. Your drones usually automatically focus on the elite cruisers so you survive with armor damage.
  3. Guristas Forsaken Rally Points.

MTUs

MTUs are an easy way to make an additional 3-5 million ISK in loot per site, however, they represent an additional 7-9 million ISK per MTU left vulnerable in space.

If space is relatively safe, the easiest way to use MTUs is to deploy the MTUs at the start of the site. This way the MTU is finished looting and ready for collection shortly after the site is finished.

If space is dangerous a safer way to use MTUs is to fetch and deploy the MTU after the site has despawned. This way the MTU can only be killed by combat probing enemies. Do not run the site with the MTU in the Vexor's cargohold; fetch the MTU from a citadel right before you deploy it.

If you have multiple alts running sites keep site bookmarks in a shared folder and have one alt handle deploying and recovering MTUs from all sites.

Scaling with alts

Disposable Vexors scale very well to multiple alts due to the low skill requirement. As the number of alts increases it becomes more important to listen to the shield alarms of all of them; if one alt is tackled and killed you may be alerted and able to get the others safe.

If some alts have lower skills than others put the high-skill alts in Havens and the low-skill alts in Forsaken Hubs and Forsaken Rally Points so both high and low skill alts finish at approximately the same time.

Skill farming your alts can further add to your profits, however, consider training the alts into stratop support ships such as Midges before starting skill farming.

PVP considerations are dominated by the fact that the most you can lose is 14-19 million ISK.

Why go AFK while ratting?

AFK ratting opens up much more time for ratting because you can be ratting while doing laundry, making dinner, or going to the store. It takes 10 minutes to start a site that is completed in approximately an hour and yields 30 million ISK at 100% BRM. That's 180 million ISK per hour of your time.

In general, paying attention while Vexor ratting does not help much. You should be ignoring neutrals in local (see below) and by the time the neutral is landing on grid your Vexor is lost. The exception is if you are ratting in staging where standing fleet might come to your aid.

A neutral enters local

In general, ignore neutrals. Most are just passing through. You lose a lot of ISK by pausing ratting to tether up for every neutral that comes by

If you are paying attention and unsure about this neutral, you can continue ratting while aligned out. This prevents you losing your ship against anything except bombers, which can decloak and lock instantly.

  1. (In the weeks prior) Bookmark all the sites you run and leave those bookmarks showing on your overview. This gives you a lot of safes all around the system. (And you can go back to drop MTUs.)
  2. If a neutral you suspect is hunting enters local, align to one of those bookmarks. Ideally align back across your orbit so you have a long time before you burn out of drone range of the rats.
    • Pay attention to how far you are getting away from the spawn point. If you are getting out of range align back across the anomaly to a bookmark on the other side.
    • Don't forget to resume orbiting with afterburner on after the neutral leaves.
  3. If the neutral lands or decloaks, warp off. You are pre-aligned so you can warp before he even finishes landing or sensor recalibrating.
  4. When d-scan or local shows the site is clear warp back and reconnect to your drones. You usually lose 1 to the rats but sometimes you lose more.

If you know that this specific neutral is hunting ratters align out, recall your drones, and warp off.

I'm tackled!

Overheat everything, put drones on tackle, align to a random celestial or citadel, and put www <system> Vexor tackled by <enemy ship type> in fleet. Have this pre-typed in fleet chat for extra speed.

Expect to lose your ship, however, occasionally you can kill a hunter - especially bombers.

I lost my Vexor!

That's expected. Your Vexor probably paid for itself already. Your priority is to get a new ship and recollect the expensive drones you left on grid.

  1. Buy a new Disposable Vexor. Pay attention to what drones you already have in your hangar and what drones you need to buy.
  2. Platinum insure your ship.
  3. Fly to the system you were ratting in.
  4. Drop off the new drones you bought at a citadel in system. You cannot reconnect to drones if you have a full drone bay.
  5. If D-scan shows the site is clear, warp back to the site.
  6. Reconnect to your lost drones and recall them.
  7. Align back to the citadel while waiting for your surviving drones to recall. Do not activate your afterburner unless you cannot tank the rats without it: Wasps travel slowly enough that having your afterburner on adds significantly to their travel time.
  8. If your wreck has not been looted, bookmark it so you can later scoop your loot.
  9. Return to the citadel to pick up a full complement of drones.
  10. If your killers have left system, resume ratting.

Some hidden benefits of losing your ship:

  • You increase the BRM in your ratting system
  • You stimulate our industry and market
  • You provide an early warning (remember to post in Intel): if a hunter kills your ship he is less likely to catch the Ishtar one system over
  • You provide camouflage for the bait ratting Vexors that can hold hunters long enough for standing fleet to get a kill

I'm losing too many Vexors!

First, remember that losing a lot of Vexors is expected. You can still be very profitable while losing a Vexor every 2 or 3 sites, especially in high-BRM systems. What matters is that you are not losing Vexors fast enough to seriously cut into your profits.

If you are truly losing too many Vexors, try shifting systems to a quieter system.

Disposable Vexor Ratting requires a high BRM to make meaningful money. A 200% BRM system turns the Vexor's 8-10 million ISK ticks into 16-20 million ISK ticks. That is comparable to what an Ishtar can make in a 100% BRM system. While high BRMs require moving to more dangerous systems, high BRMs also mean the Vexor is paid for faster.

Unlike normal ratting ships you can ignore cloaky campers when selecting systems. Semi-AFK cloaky campers do not drop frequently enough to cut into your profitability.

Also unlike normal ratting ships Vexor ratting in BRAVE's staging can be profitable. Roamers are usually too tied up fighting standing fleet to go for a Vexor and if you are tackled standing fleet may be able to reach you in time to help, provided you are paying enough attention to call for help.

  • public/dojo/wiki/disposable-vexor-ratting.txt
  • Last modified: 2022/08/29 15:05
  • by Turindo Ohaya